


A World Unseen

by WDW



Category: Danny Phantom, Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Major Character Undeath, and not for Stan this time! Wow I am truly mixing things up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:55:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26617063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WDW/pseuds/WDW
Summary: In 1982, Stan manages to shut down the portal, a second too late, a second too early.The doors between dimensions snap shut with Ford halfway through them.
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 19
Kudos: 67





	A World Unseen

_In seven thousand, three-hundred and ninety-two universes where Stanley and Stanford Pines both exist_ , Stan is too late to save his brother.

By the time he realizes exactly what is happening, had just _happened_ , the portal had already gone dark and cold. The rest of the machinery is winding down around it with hitching gasps of mechanical breaths, and for a long moment there is no air at all in Stan's lungs. He slams desperately on the panel, then the button, and when that does nothing, he resorts to pulling at the stem of the whole thing with his entire body weight.

Ford's gone. He has been for - seconds, minutes, and as the more time passes the more this all becomes horribly, terribly real.

Stan can still hear his brother screaming, and it never really stops. The sound haunts him until the day it doesn't.

 _In three thousand, two hundred, twenty-three universes where Stanley and Stanford Pines both exist_ , when Ford is sucked up into the air kicking and screaming and begging for help, Stan manages to shut down the portal in time.

It's luck for the most part. In a few it is because Stan had been more observant when he had first entered the laboratory, in several others it is because Ford was composed enough to point coherently at the shut-down mechanism amidst his flailing.

None of that matters, because what comes after remains the same.

They dust themselves off, avoid each other's eyes. Nothing has changed, not really. Neither of them is sure how to broach a conversation they do not know how to have.

It takes several hours for Ford to hold out his journal and ask again for his brother to leave him for the ends of the world.

This time, Stan says yes.

Neither of them lives to see the next year, not in any way that matters.

It is important to note, however, that while there is an infinite amount of universes that exist in the broad multiverse, not every possibility occurs. After all, there is an endless amount of numbers greater than zero that will never, ever hit negative.

Yet there are outcomes still that are more unlikely than any other, brief blinks in the maddening whirl of events dictated by the impredictability of free will.

For such a pivotal point in the fate of existence, the events that occur in the basement lab of a house on the outskirts of Gravity Falls do not diverge greatly from what is set.

What happens afterwards, certainly, is nigh unpredictable.

But here, now - one brother loses another, or himself, or both.

 _In one universe where Stanley and Stanford Pines both exist_ , something else happens entirely.

*

Stan Pines wasn't the kind of guy who prayed.

His experience with the whole business boiled down to about a decade's worth of mumble-davening under Ma's watchful eyes, and maybe a Hail Mary or two when things were going shittily enough that he figured he needed every bit of divine intervention he could get. Some people would call that blasphemy, but Stan had learned a decade ago not to put all his trust in one place.

At best, it was a waste of both time and breath. At worst, prayer brought false hope, the insidious kind that numbed panic and slowed adrenaline to a crawl. It made a person curl up instead of fighting like hell to survive. That wasn't something Stan could have in his life, not if he wanted to _have_ a life for much longer afterwards.

But when Stan watched in horror as his brother disappeared, screaming and struggling into the blinding glow of his own overgrown science fair experiment... he realized he would kill for any bit of hope he could get.

Even the false kind. _Especially_ the false kind.

Ford was leaving him behind, for the second time in their lives. And Stan knew, with the grim certainty of the self-condemned, that not only was he was just as helpless to stop it...

It was all his fault.

_Again._

It was this second of terrified, self-accusatory thought would change everything.

Because in this universe, this moment of hesitation Stan has before springing into action means he manages to see his brother gesturing frantically through the light. He didn't know for sure, but he thinks - hopes - that Ford might just be pointing to the distant silhoulette of something that might turn this damn thing _off_ if he squinted his eyes and mentally recited every stray word of prayer he knew.

Stan doesn't remember the next few minutes well, except:

The portal didn't go down so easily, with digital red letters screeching 'UNAUTHORIZED' and 'UNKNOWN USER' scroll tauntingly across every screen Stan could see. He slammed his fist on the button so hard he can't feel the impact, and then again, and then _again again again_ because it just wasn't _working_.

Stan looked up, and for a moment, he met his brother's terrified eyes. Ford was disappearing fast. He couldn't see his brother's legs anymore because they were already in the portal, and now his waist, and now his -

He couldn't think. All that was left was to do _._

Stan hurled himself forward, feels the hard impact of metal against his body. There is a crunch.

It came a second too early, a second too late.

Because it was then that Ford screamed something, somewhere in the distance. For a moment, it was as the roar of the portal had disappeared entirely because he could hear each and every word coming out of his brother's mouth.

He quickly wished he hadn't.

"Stanley, _don't!_ "

The lights flickered, and Stan could hear the sound of machinery winding to a sudden halt. He thought maybe it was his imagination but he flinched nonetheless at the sound of an unearthly wail, one that came more from the other side of his own mind than any real, physical location.

Through his watering eyes, for the briefest instance of time, Stan saw his brother and - with dawning horror - how his body was still suspended halfway through the electric blue void.

Ford stared right back at him, an expression of complete, utter terror on his face.

And for the first time, Stan realized that he had just forcefully turned off some giant, untested science invention - while his brother was still halfway _in_ it.

" _Shit."_

Things happened very quickly after that.

The portal turned off with a sucking sound, like a space vacuum put through the wringer. Its eerie blue light blinked out of existence in a way that is almost insultingly easy. A beat later, everything that had been lifted up in the air came crashing down, and before he has a chance to react, terrifyingly _out_.

In the instance before all the light bulbs in the laboratory explode into darkness and he himself is thrown headfirst into the wall behind him, Stan sees something fall limply from the portal's opening.

*

Stan felt the cold, first.

He blinked to awareness slowly, groggy and entirely confused. Stan was freezing even though he was wearing the thickest, _only_ winter coat he had, which means he had fallen asleep somewhere without heating. That in of itself was Bad News. Combined with the sticky wetness that matted the hair on the back of his head and the way almost every part of his body hurt in varying degrees, he could only conclude that something Entirely Terrible had happened.

He pushed himself up, some kind of weird dust sticking onto his hands as he does so. The air smelled like ozone in a way that makes him dizzy. He couldn't see for shit in this darkness, not even when he held his hands right there in front of his face. The only dim source of light came from about a dozen feet away, from a circular series of glowing symbols etched on some kind of... weird, triangular, metal structure.

And just like that, Stan remembered what had happened.

_"Ford!"_

He took off running for the portal, which was easy to find considering it was the only last bit of light left in the place. He doesn't see Ford anywhere. It's too dark for that. But Stan told himself that his brother couldn't have fallen far from where he was the last time he saw him, hanging helplessly in the air in front of the portal's gaping electric maw.

 _If he was here at all_ , he very adamantly does _not_ think.

Stan started calling his brother's name, cycling through variations and nicknames until he feels like he would throw up if he had to open his mouth again.

He groped around in the darkness for ages, checking every square inch around the perimeter of the portal with his hands because it was still too dark to see clearly. Stan didn't know how long he's down there - an hour, maybe, or more. And Ford's laboratory really wasn't all that big. Not big enough for a whole human body to go unnoticed on its floor.

He didn't cry. Stan didn't _cry_ , because he was a grown man raised in a certain kind of household and he wasn't a wussy, even if his brother was gone and most likely dead and he had been so _stupid._ Because, Ford had begged him to come, he had wanted him to help him, and now look at what Stan had done to him.

...Oh, fuck it.

For once, Stan was glad that there was no one else down here. His big, ugly sobs went unheard by anyone other than him. He cried into his fists, kneeling right there in front of the portal even though the cold made his knees go painfully numb.

He knew the exact moment things really got to him when he started talking out loud, more pleading and begging than anything actual coherent or useful. Stan's voice carried oddly in the cavernous set-up of the laboratory, in a way that sounded like someone else was saying them right into his own ears.

"Please," he sobbed, even though just saying the word made his shoulder wound burn. " _Please come back_."

There was no reply, but he hadn't really expected one. The laboratory was empty except for him and his brother's invention.

Slowly, leadenly, Stan pushed himself up onto his feet and stood up. There was nothing down here left for him.

He gave the portal one last lingering glance over his shoulder, took one step forwards, and promptly tripped over a body that Stan would bet _money_ was not there before.

Stan went sprawling forwards with a yelp of indignation, and then he _realizes_.

"Ford," he muttered, eyes wide as he crawled back to where the body - his _brother_ was, babbling all the way. "Holy crap, _Ford_. You're still here, you're still here, you're still -"

He still couldn't see a thing, but Stan ran his hands over his brother's hair, his face, his weirdly sticky jacket, and it's him. Any and all questions that had been floating around in his mind disappeared just like that. There was something much more important here. He couldn't help but grin widely to himself, probably a bit manically as he lifted up Ford's unconscious form - god, he was light - and over his shoulder.

A strange, exhilarating mix of joy and relief filled Stan's mind. He held onto his brother's cold hands like they were a lifeline as the elevator ticked upwards. He couldn't feel tired or pained at all, buoyed as he was by the realization that for once in his life, things were going to be okay.

Stan put his brother down on the long couch with a long exhale.

That was when he realized that his brother wasn't breathing.

**Author's Note:**

> Young Ford Pines he was just 28  
> When he built a very strange machine  
> It was designed to view a world unseen


End file.
